


Forsaken

by oceansinmychest



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Descent into Madness, One Shot, Pining, Post-Possession, Season/Series 01, haunted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-06-08 16:33:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15247344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oceansinmychest/pseuds/oceansinmychest
Summary: Like some form of necrosis, Miss Ives suffers from an impossible wound to doctor.





	Forsaken

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ScarletteStar1](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScarletteStar1/gifts).



> Listening to the Queen of the Damned soundtrack inspired this. 
> 
> Just another gift for my friend, Scar. Cheers.

She spends her evening with her forehead glued to the wall. A low hum resonates. The Devil wants her and so, He shall have her. Not yet. All good things come to the Dark Prince who waits.

Like some form of necrosis, Miss Ives suffers from an impossible wound to doctor. A fever intensifies, it builds up inside her. Possession has emptied out her innards and made her hollow, driven her mad with the tortured souls of the damned. Clairvoyance functions as a blessing and a curse.

Loose from her updo, her long hair falls into her face. The locks flow like an overturned jar of ink marking a vellum page. The blood runs so close to her pale skin; it looks like embalming fluid. A restlessness inhabits her weary soul. Ghost-white from a worn life, she seals a terrible secret within. Tonight, Miss Ives only has the company of moths to rely on. They throw their tiny bodies against glass. One by one, she watches them flutter and fall.

Cast aside all social graces, she has swapped her pretty dresses for bedclothes, no longer as polished as obsidian. On her hands and knees, she tries to crawl toward the cross on the wall that spins ‘round and ‘round, settling on upside down.

A piece of her is carved away, something missing, some indescribable ache. Loss seems the easiest label to tack onto this vast emptiness. Some things should never be unleashed.

Her downward spiral could be compared to a slow rot, gnawing at her innards and spreading towards her heart, as an insufferable, indescribable illness. This is the burden of feeling too much.

Men will always fault the wound between your legs. Victorian repression tears her asunder. Her waif-like form suspends in grief. She doesn’t fit the image of a Gibson Girl. She calls pain pleasure. What would she know?

Where did this loneliness - this vast emptiness - first stem from? Electra obsesses over her passion. Vanessa labels herself as the great suffocator. The silent succubus. The self-branded whore. She wishes she could curl up on Sir Malcolm’s leather chair and bask in the quietude of his study (she wants him, she wants him, and they’re not right). Vanessa Ives is incapable of distinguishing want from need, need from want.

Irrevocably marked, she feels a fire surge through her veins and lower still. Mournful pride crowns her. No man wants her. The Devil craves her. She mewls, howls, groans. It’s no different from speaking in tongues.

Plaster flakes off the ceiling. The gaslit lamp begins to wane. She turns her attention back to the wallpaper: the scritching, the scratching, the peeling, the great unraveling.

She closes her eyes and imagines a doll staring back. Unnerved, her bloodshot stare snaps awake. Ragged fingernails rake across the faded, yellow wallpaper where she peels at the layers of the woman trapped within.

Fragments curl and wilt, sailing down toward the ground. Teeth bared, she resembles a wild, untamed thing. In this state, he comes to her though he isn’t a gunslinger (Mr. Chandler remains vigilant outside). Come, come, commala. He does not ignore her as he once ignored his ‘beloved’ Mina.

The men take turns watching over her. She cannot distinguish the real from the false. It could be Sir Malcolm, it could be a well-stitched suit resembling Sir Malcolm.

“What have you done?” He inquires.

His horror rivals mild disinterest or compassionate indignation.

She loathes him for it.

When Sir Malcolm approaches, she reacts as a cornered animal would. From her corner of wreckage, she hisses. As soon as he reaches out, she lashes in childish retaliation.

Rid of composure, she sinks her teeth into his forearm as some feral thing. She wants to taste his blood, sticky and hot, but instead tastes cotton, smoke, and gunpowder.

His hand makes a fist. He doesn’t slap her though the temptation lingers in the back of his mind. Instead, he pulls the fire closer. His free arm wraps around her. Entraps her. Ensnares her. The shell of her ear rubs against his vest. She hears his heart beat, loud and tart and violently true.

Vanessa doesn’t quote Keats, doesn’t parrot Lucifer’s seduction, but kneads at this vainglorious fool’s chest. He refuses to treat her like a child; she’s a prize in his arms: a woman in grief.

“This is not you,” he rasps, his somber voice muffled against the crown of her sunken head.

In her hysteria, she knows that to be the truth.

“Save me,” she calls out, her tears salty and enraged, as if she preaches to a false god.

“No, Vanessa. You’re capable of saving yourself.”

Malcolm releases her from his hunter’s grip. Come morning, his forearm will be bruised – black and purple, heinously ugly – to match the state of the man within.

He does not speak of it.

His memory, instead, becomes selective. A fickle beast that chooses to remember the scent of her hair and her warm body against his.

**Author's Note:**

> As an Easter egg, "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman also served as my inspiration.


End file.
